UNC tight end Fritts, who missed the 2018 sea­son, will trans­fer

Fritts, who has one year of el­i­gi­bil­ity re­main­ing, an­nounced the news Fri­day on Twit­ter.

“I will be trans­fer­ring for my fi­nal year of el­i­gi­bil­ity and as thank­ful as I am for my un­be­liev­able time here at chapel hill (sic), I am just as ex­cited and hun­gry for my next jour­ney,” he wrote.

It is un­clear where he will go next.

The 6- 4, 240-pound tight end was ex­pected to be a big con­trib­u­tor for the Tar Heels in 2018, but he suf­fered a knee in­jury in the spring. He later had surgery and missed the en­tire sea­son.

Junior tight end Carl Tucker started and had 16 catches for 265 yards and two touch­downs.

Dur­ing Fritts’ junior sea­son in 2017, Fritts fin­ished with 25 catches for 177 yards and four touch­downs. His four touch­downs were sec­ond on the team.

Fritts could have been an as­set in a pass­ing game that strug­gled through­out the 2018 sea­son. While the Tar Heels av­er­aged 248.8 pass­ing yards per game, ranked 48th in the coun­try, they strug­gled to score touch­downs in the red­zone. UNC’s red­zone touch­down per­cent­age was 53.3 per­cent, which was ranked 117th out of 130 FBS teams.

Fritts went to Men­tor High in Ohio, where he was team­mates with for­mer UNC quar­ter­back Mitchell Tru­bisky. Dur­ing his junior year of high school, he caught 59 passes from Tru­bisky for 1,189 yards and 17 touch­downs. Tru­bisky is the start­ing quar­ter­back for the Chicago Bears.

Fritts, who was re­cruited by for­mer UNC coach Larry Fe­dora, en­rolled at UNC in Jan­uary 2014 and was red­shirted dur­ing his fresh­man sea­son. Two weeks ago, Fe­dora was fired af­ter seven sea­sons as the head coach. Mack Brown, who coached at UNC from 1988 to 1997, was hired to re­place him.

In the three years Fritts saw the field, he had 47 catches for 441 yards and nine touch­downs.